Thursday, October 31, 2013

Pumpkin House, Tea House

Before J-TEA occupied this house on
Friendly Street, it was the Pumpkin House, owned by Cindy and Ron
Rutledge. The Pumpkin House was a kind of neighborhood
gathering with a large following. The Rutledges would provide
hundreds of pumpkins and the tools to carve them with, and ask the
entire neighborhood over to their house for carving.
From their
stories recounting the events from years past, they evidently had to
carve a lot of the pumpkins themselves and it was always a push for
them to get it done. Apparently, and I'm name dropping here, but
Toshi from Toshi's Ramen was an integral part of the carving team.

The carvers, armed with knives and
spoons, surrounded themselves with pumpkins and had to carve
themselves out as if escaping from a scene in the Walking Dead, but
pumpkin guts flying instead of brains.

The pumpkins needed scaffolding to
hold their growing numbers and cars would come full of curious
onlookers to see the impressive collection of jack 'o lanterns.

We tried for a bit to resurrect the
pumpkin tradition, until a couple years ago when I had the chance to
ask Cindy how they did it. Essentially, she said, it was a whole lot
of work. Unfortunately I've already signed myself up for too much of
that so I let that one go. But what we did do is offer some great
Halloween themed teas and we will be serving them again this year.
Mummy's Dust Puer, B+ Hibiscus for Vampires, and Ghost's Cry
Wooooo-long. Rumour has it, we will have French style hot chocolate
infused with tea rather than water...a Dia de los Muertos Chocolate
Fest.